My Liverpool Bramhills seem to have been mainly slum-dwellers. We know from Elizabeth Bramhill's birth in 1893 and the 1901 Census that they lived in Denison Street, just north of the Pier Head. In 1893, mother and father were William James and Sarah (nee King).
From my father's memoirs, we know the brothers and sisters had a house in Midghall Street from the time of the Great War to 1922, when my grandfather and his brother Alf died.
Denison Street would have been built in the early 1800s and was named after William Denison, part-owner of the privateer Enterprise. At that time, the city was growing rapidly; and population increased from 75,000 in 1800 to 493,000 by 1871, with people flooding to find work from England and Ireland.
Denison Street became famed for its lodging houses for poor emigrants, but it did include some court houses, where my Liverpool Bramhills lived.
This is a description of a typical court in 19th century slum areas: "Courts were narrow and were often connected to the street by a passageway. Between four and 16 homes were built on each side of a court, back to back with the next court, and with one room on each storey of up to three storeys. Most houses were occupied by two or more families often a whole family would live in just one room. There was little light and fresh air, and one or two toilets, and one tap, for the whole court. Rubbish piled up in the centre of the court. Early death was rife, with typhoid and cholera frequent occurences.
By the 1850s, Denison Street was in decay, especially following several cholera outbreaks in the neighbourhood in the 1840s. It was listed, with its near-neighbours, as home to "the principal lodging-houses for poor emigrants".
During the days of sailing ships, vessels were ‘expected any day now’ and, if the wind was against them, they could be up to three weeks late - leading to the demand for lodgings in Denison Street and around.
The London Morning Post described most of the homes as '...of the filthiest kind externally and internally. The wretched accommodation provided for the multitudes of emigrants that daily pass into Liverpool, to await the departure of the vessels by which they have secured their passage, and the robberies of all kinds to which they are subjected during their stay, are evils that the philanthropic citizens of Liverpool, who feel for the misery of their fellow-creatures, might well hasten to remedy...."
Advice to these emigrants, mainly Irish people heading for the USA, was to "engage private lodgings...while they look out a proper vessel". One writer said " The best house for supplies I found in Liverpool, where almost every thing necessary was to be procured; it is the north corner, at the top of Denison-street. It is a grocery shop and bake-house; the proprietor is a most obliging and honourable man. Emigrants, when they leave home, must have their eyes open, as they will meet with sharpers in every direction, practising on their credulity, offering the best lodgings, provisions, &c. &c.; but let every one examine for himself."
Of Midghall Street, my father, Captain William Frank Bramhill, wrote: "On one side of the street were huge warehouses that towered above the mean little houses. I used to sit and watch bags of sugar being hoisted from horse-drawn drays into the loft high above the house rooftops. There was a sickly smell of molasses, and the light never reached the house windows because of the size of the warehouses.
"In the house lived Uncle Alf, Uncle Tom, Aunty Lizzie and my Dad. There must have been precious little money available because there was never much to eat. What meals there were were served on an ugly wooden table. Sometimes Aunty Lizzie would put newspapers on it to act as a tablecloth. I recall the table was always covered with flies and two big sticky fly catchers hung above the table. Sometimes the flies fell off and I would push them down the cracks in the boards with my knife.
"I shared a bedroom with Uncle Alf. He was a dirty, yellow-faced mean character who smelled all the time. His clothes were always dirty and he never wore a collar; his best adornment was a tatty old scarf tied in a Liverpool overhand knot, and on his head a greasy old cap. I had to sleep with him in a single bed in the smallest of the two bedrooms. I was next to the wall. That wall stands out like nothing else in my whole life for, behind the creases in the tatty wallpaper, lived colonies of bugs. These would crawl out and down on to the bed. I would crush them and they made a horrible mess, especially if they were full of blood. That horrible room smelled of Uncle Alf and Keating's Powder, scattered liberally by Aunty Lizzie to keep the pests at bay. Aunty Lizzie would scold me for scratching myself; 'people will think you're lousy,' she would say, but all who lived in that mean little street well knew it couldn't help but be true.
"The toilet was outside in the dirty back yard which smelled of sour refuse and I dreaded having to go downstairs at night-time for the toilet. I had to pass through the ill-kept kitchen and when I held up the candle I would see scurrying beetles on the draining board.
"Uncle Tom and Dad slept downstairs on the settee and Aunty Lizzie occupied the second bedroom by herself. She was loud-mouthed and uncouth and at times I hated her. I never knew Tom and Alf go out to work. They would sit at the table talking or playing cards and smoking. The table always held remains of meals, dirty dishes, old newspapers. Lizzie kept shouting at the two men, calling them lazy good-for-nothings who never cleaned themselves or the house. She herself always sat close to the fire, chain-smoking. She smelled vile at times. There was no bath in the house and to get such a luxury, one had to go to the new public baths in Bevington Bush, but the Bramhills never seemed to have enough money for such an indulgence.
"I cannot recall seeing much of Dad in those days; he was scarcely ever at home during the day or early evening. Perhaps he was the only one working. Friday was a big day. We got a real dinner that day and it was my job to take a big basin over Vauxhall Road to a cafe and queue with the other kids to get the basin filled with Irish stew. I remember the shop well. It had a rich cooking smell and my mouth would water as I watched the old lady behind the counter ladle the stew. She would give me a slice of bread to go with my basin and tell me to take a dip-in before I left the shop to keep me warm. When I got home the men would be sitting at the table, with a newspaper tablecloth. They would snatch the basin from me and empty it on to their plates, only Aunty Lizzie stopping them taking it all.
"I went to school in Moorfields and years later I used to pass that building and think of the hours I spent in its dreary classrooms.It had a triangular playground hemmed in by offices. I must have had free meals and I travelled from the school to another building with many other children, getting food in return for a green ticket. The place smelled sour but the food was good and I was always hungry ... hungry and cold with bare feet.
"One Empire Day, probably May 24 1920, I was walking back from school, where I had been singing patriotic songs and waving the Union Flag, and found a pack of bread and butter sandwiches, then some locust beans. I ate them greedily. The bins had been emptied that afternoon. I was just one of the thousands of hungry, bare-footed brats in the Liverpool slumland. Can I be blamed if I now view the great British Empire with cynicism. Great? For whom?
